Linking content marketing and revenue goals

By Cynthia Ranking
Changes the Internet has demanded of the marketing industry are not all bad. Without the Internet, content marketing may not have become as impactful as it has. Traditional marketing (i.e. newspaper and magazine ads) is also not yielded the results it once did.

Getting clear about what content marketing is
Add to this the fact that many small business owners don’t yet have the revenues to spend money on marketing, and it’s understandable why small business owners are afraid to pay someone to spread the word about their business. Hence, content marketing.


Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as, “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Time, research, writing and editing skills are required, at the minimum, to succeed with content marketing. Components of the marketing form include:

• Blogging (link company blogs to business websites to keep website content fresh)
• Guest posting (this works if small business owners guest post at websites their target audience frequents)
• Social media content
• Videos (Videos that demand attention from colleagues, employees, family and friends, especially people with a critical eye, can pull in hundreds of online viewers)
• Infographics (design skills are needed to build out infographics)
• White papers
• Case studies

Develop an editorial calendar to avoid writing and publishing the same content over and over. Focus on providing educational, entertaining, inspirational, etc. content. For example, if a company’s target audience is single, middle aged Christian women, first-person inspirational stories can yield positive results.

There’s no need for small business owners to load content with keywords. Instead, small business owners should focus on the target audience. What do these people want? Business owners should ask themselves how they can give their target audience what they want in a way no one else is.

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Source:
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/ (Content Marketing Institute)